innocence
by symphonies of you
Summary: "He has this uncanny ability to make everyone feel good about themselves no matter what predicament they're in. He still makes her feel like she's worth something, like there's something else to her besides letters and writing and colours." teddymollyii - for tatoe. One-shot.


**Hello there!**

**This is my secret santa fic for taters (heading for a huge collision). Love you!**

**DISCLAIMER: Don't own, JKR does. :)**

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prompts: letter, splashing, squint, branch

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_this innocence is brilliant_

_i hope that it will stay_

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She loves writing letters. Long letters in cursive with its loops and its immaculateness. And she signs her name with a flourish. She has long practised her signature—_Molly G. Weasley_. Sometimes she fills her letters with jokes and recollections of hilarity to cheer a friend up. Sometimes she fills her letters with heartfelt notions and advice to reassure a friend and she attaches a Mars Bar—she has recently discovered the joy of Muggle sweets—to it.

And she also loves reading letters.

She loves getting letters from Theodore Remus Lupin. He uses an endless variety of Muggle pens—_not a quill_—to write his letters to her. The inevitable whirl of vivid, bright colours across her vision never fails to make her smile. Sometimes his handwriting is cramped and she has to squint to read it but it's alright because his letters are _unique _and just sort of beautiful in a simplistic, innocent way that is only comprehendible to her. And she just has a rather unhealthy obsession with letters and writing and colours.

And, unfortunately, everything about Teddy Lupin draws her like a hopelessly captivated moth to a dancing flame.

It's not just his ability to write wonderful letters. It's his smile, grin, smirk that makes her fall to pieces. It reduces her to a stuttering mess and she wonders if he can see it. She hopes not because she'd rather him not know of her silly infatuation with him.

It's his fascinating colour changing hair—it's like he's a rainbow himself. His eyes are usually green, the fading green of a leaf before it curls and slips away from the limb of the tree branch it was clinging to. But sometimes they're a chestnut brown, the colour of her desk, the one she sits at to write her letters. He likes wearing blank white tees, the colour of her walls, stark white and utterly bare with no gleaming posters of Quidditch teams or wizarding rock bands. He wears black socks, the colour of ink. But sometimes they're yellow, a faded yellow, the colour of the old, yellowed parchment she prefers to use when writing letters. His hair is usually a familiar shock of turquoise though she knows not why. His blush is _redredred_ against his cheeks. And she wishes it was for her but she knows it's not.

(It's for Victoire.)

And that is why she writes the word "unfortunately" when detailing the fact that everything about Teddy Lupin draws her like a hopelessly captivated moth to a dancing flame.

You see, all of her cousins are in love with Teddy. Perfect, dashing, intelligent Teddy. But no, he only has eyes for Victoire. Victoire in all her Ravenclaw, elegant, veela glory. She reckons that they were meant to be, anyways. They have been inseparable since Victoire could walk, and Molly is just his auburn-haired, blue-eyed doll, fun to play with and cast away whenever Victoire comes into the picture. They're not together yet and she knows that it's inevitable that they'll end up together soon, but she hopes anyways.

She's a dreamer. She never runs out of hope, not even when she's broken.

But somehow she still feels special. He has this uncanny ability to make everyone feel good about themselves no matter what predicament they're in. He still makes her feel like she's worth something, like there's something else to her besides letters and writing and colours. And, it's somewhat true. There's more behind this mask of innocent fascination. But it's only a knotted lattice of emotions interwoven with jealousy and hope and heartbrokenness.

She's just a broken girl with a love for letters and writing and colours and a tangled web of unwanted emotions.

She's scratching away at another letter to him because the rush of writing to him is addicting and the anticipated adrenaline that comes with having him write back to her is propelling her to keep on writing to him.

_Dear Teddy,_

_Today, Lorcan finally gathered enough courage to ask my sister on a date, and she said yes. Can you believe it? Speaking of dates, can I be forward with you right now? Are you in lov_

She stops. Should she ask him? Should she ask him if he's in love with Victoire? Should she ask him if he's in love with _her_, Molly Ginevra Weasley?

She bites her lip in her indecision. Sighing deeply, she connects the 'v' to an 'e' and finishes the question with the name "Victoire" instead of her own because she's scared and she's no Gryffindor unlike him. She's a Hufflepuff, and all she knows is loyalty and trust, not bravery. Bravery was a foreign concept not to be trifled with. It just wasn't her.

She signs her name with a flourish—_Molly G. Weasley_—and she slips it into an envelope from a blue box of envelopes that she stores in her drawers. Tying the envelope to her owl's leg, she whispers to Handel to send it to Teddy.

And then, she leans back in her chair and waits.

She stares at a framed picture of Teddy and her that sits on the smooth, chestnut wood of her desk. He's smiling that lopsided grin at the camera with one arm casually slung over her shoulders, and she's smiling up at him with adoration defining her lightly freckled face. It was taken with a Muggle camera, so it doesn't portray any movement but she remembers exactly what they were doing that day.

It was the day she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was in love with Teddy Lupin. And maybe, just maybe, he was in love with her, too.

He had come over with a wrapped surprise in his hands for her birthday. It was a set of twelve Muggle pens—_ballpoint pens_, to be specific—of twelve different colours. And she knew, she just knew that she loved Teddy Lupin.

(She still hasn't opened the package of ballpoint pens. She treasures the importance of the multi-coloured pens too much to use them.)

She loves his compassion for writing poetry, his slanted handwriting, his secret newfound love for classical music, his fear of heights, his enthralment with the ideas and theories and discoveries that Muggles have come up with in what they dub as "science."

Just everything about him, she loves. From his strengths to his weaknesses.

She especially loves the way he looks at her sometimes. Sure, it gives her false hope to feed upon, but this is the best she can get. She loves the way he looks into her eyes when she asks him to change his hair to a certain colour and he says yes in his low voice that makes her shiver.

Twelve minutes later, she is shaken from her reverie when she hears a low hoot and Handel's beak tapping against her window. With weary feet, she gets up to open the window and she shuts it as her owl flies in with his letter. She unties the envelope from his leg and sits down on her bed as she closes her eyes, her fingers trembling as she struggles to open the letter.

She had felt like she'd already known his answer before she opened his eyes.

_Yes_.

Just a one-worded answer and nothing else.

A lone tear escapes from her left eye, splashing upon the letter held between her fingers. Then, more tears break free and it's like a flood, uncontrollable and involuntary. Sobs wrack her tiny frame and her resolve to never stop believing in the impossible has dwindled down to almost nothing.

But hope is still there, knocking at her bedroom door. She chooses to answer the door and grasp its hand tightly.

It's the most horrible New Year's Eve in her life of sixteen years, and she chooses to use her wish on Teddy.

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Five years later, Teddy and Victoire are married and they're as happy as can be.

But Molly, she's broken. She's irreparable. She's shattered like a falling teacup exploding into a million shards of china against the marble floor. She's broken beyond repair.

And she's just about run out of hope.

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_this innocence is brilliant_

_i hope that it will stay_

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**A/N: Song lyrics belong to Avril Lavigne. So, how did you like it? Please leave your comments in a review! This wasn't really written in an exquisite style as usual because I meant for this to be interpreted as something written in a simplistic manner with an air of innocence about it. And I hope I've accomplished that.**

**If you haven't already, please check out a marauder fic I've written about Lily and Marlene's friendship. And if you like The Mortal Instruments, I've recently written a malec fic for secret santa on the rosescorpius fans forum.**

**Please don't favourite without reviewing! =)**

**-nic.**


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